


weight of a thousand suns

by Merlinnn



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 14:06:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18100010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merlinnn/pseuds/Merlinnn
Summary: "And with that, like the weight of a thousand suns, Eliot was miles away."Eliot loves listening to Quentin read. The flashbacks? Not so much.





	weight of a thousand suns

**Author's Note:**

> hey, the real-time interactions are loosely lifted from the beginning of 3x13 as Quentin reads to them and that opening served as a main inspiration for this. Also sorry/not sorry for the lowkey angst hahaha.

“Shhh Bambi, let him read,” whispered Eliot reproachfully, giving her a playful thwack.

“Just saying,  ándale,” said Margo with a shrug, leaning back into the sofa as Quentin flashed Eliot a quick, grateful smile. And with that, like the weight of a thousand suns, Eliot was miles away. 

 

_ It was a long, unending day of Fillorian summertime, the sun high in the sky burning hot and bright well into the night, and the mosaic had barely been touched. The golden light spilled across the tiles but neither Eliot or Quentin had the energy in them to get up and puzzle it out, instead choosing to lay indolent in the grass moving between napping and sipping at the sweet wine Eliot had yet to recreate in Whitespire. Why, he wondered, could someone in the Fillorian backwoods make wine better than he ever had as High King? At that moment Quentin slipped out of the cottage where he’d gathered food for their supper; bread, cheese and of course, Arielle’s daily delivery of the juiciest peaches and plums. Eliot wasn’t sure he’d ever tire of eating them. Quentin came and joined him on the blanket in the grass an arms throw from the mosaic, biting into a peach and letting it dribble down his chin as Eliot lifted his head before resting it back on Quentin’s thigh. _

_ “Read me a story Q,” said Eliot, already closing his eyes against the bright sun. _

_ “A story?” asked Quentin around a mouthful of peach, “with what books?” _

_ Eliot shrugged his shoulders: “You must know some stories,” he said, squinting one eye open to frown at Quentin, who finished his peach and licked at his lips. _

_ “I might know one,” he said with a secretive smile, tossing the stone into the grass and resting his sticky hand on the crown of Eliot’s head.  _

_ “It was the first summer after the war,” he began, hand combing through Eliot’s soft curls as he read that first Fillory and Further book to him in the warm light of the evening sun. Eliot hadn’t realised Quentin knew them off by heart, but of course he did. Eliot would’ve been disappointed if he hadn’t. They stayed like that for hours, Quentin’s quiet voice retelling of the Chatwins and their magical closet and Eliot drowsy against his thigh.  _

 

“Hey El,” whispered Margo, “you disappeared for a second,” she said, nudging him gently as Quentin continued the tale of the knight’s daughter across the room.

“I’m here,” he responded for no other reason than to appease her as he drained his glass. He wasn’t there, as he gazed at Quentin in his absolute element reading to the gathered crowd from the magical tome in his hands. Quentin loved reading aloud, involving himself in the story and dramatising it in ways Eliot never could, and Eliot adored listening to him.

 

_ It was Quentin’s job to do many things around the house, but it had been an unanimous, unspoken agreement that Quentin read Teddy’s bedtime stories. Eliot and Arielle could just never do them justice. In the ramshackle addition at the back of the cottage that had been hastily thrown together by Eliot late in the spring, Quentin would sit in the weathered wood chair and tell Teddy all sorts of tales, arms thrown about in grand motions and different voices for all the different characters. Naturally, Fillory and Further was a favourite, as Eliot expected of any child of Quentin’s, but before long Teddy’s overactive imagination demanded more and so Quentin would tell him any number of bastardised versions of Earth novels. Eliot could remember so many evenings that tugged at his heartstrings; Teddy, a baby-faced six year old tucked under a pile of patchwork quilts and furs in the dead of winter as Quentin sat in the chair beside him and told him some version of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, as far as Quentin could remember it and the rest being imagined on the spot. (Eliot certainly didn’t remember any dragons in the novel, but he hadn’t really paid attention in AP Lit). Eliot had stood hidden in the doorway, lithely resting against the frame as he too became engrossed in Quentin’s storytelling, so much so he didn’t even hear Arielle join him and tuck herself under his arm to listen in. He hugged her tight, resting his chin on the top of her head as the pair of them listened to Quentin’s dramatics give way to the soft, consistent breathing of a sleeping Teddy and Quentin’s story slipping away. He rose slowly, as though any sharp movements could wake him, and pressed a kiss to his hair and tucked in his blankets before turning to find Eliot and Arielle stood in the door. Quentin smiled brightly to himself, coming over to kiss Arielle and then Eliot in turn, ushering them out of the room so that he could close Teddy’s door silently behind them. _

 

“Wait hold on,” interrupted Eliot, dragging himself back to his body and focusing his eyes back onto Quentin, “I thought the doors swallowed the keys?” 

“It did, but then…” started Quentin, running a hand through his hair as he flicked back the page searching for an answer.

“But then she has them again? I’m not that drunk Q, that’s sloppy plotting.” Eliot stood with his empty glass and headed to the drinks table as Josh jumped in with his own theory and a debate began. He poured himself another scotch - not his typical drink by any means but things were getting stressful in the Physical Kids Cottage.

 

_ Sloppy plotting indeed. Whichever overarching demigod was writing the adventures of El and Q and the beauty of all life had a twisted sense of humour, killing Arielle before she’d even reached 30 with something as simple as pneumonia and leaving her son motherless. Eliot adored listening to Quentin reading and rambling and generally fixating on something whether it being a tall tale for Teddy’s benefit or a startling introspection into whether a Fillorian moon had the same effect on tides as an Earth moon (Quentin had many opinions on this particular subject) but after Arielle’s death, it fell to Eliot to distract Q and keep his mind busy. And for once, Eliot didn’t think a quick fuck would work. And so Eliot would tell him things he’d never told anyone; he didn’t have the imagination or quick thinking Quentin did and so could never imagine or retell stories the way he could, instead telling Quentin truths about himself, the only things he could tell. For weeks on end they sat on the sandpit of the mosaic, slowly placing tiles and marking them with coloured chalk as Eliot talked and talked of his life in Indiana and the intricacies of agriculture through to his years in undergrad and entrance to Brakebills. To begin with it almost physically hurt, to divulge so much and expose so much as Quentin would sit, mute, listening intently and fiddling with the tiles. But this wasn’t about Eliot. And before long Quentin spoke to him again, soft and quietly, voice raw in the night as he’d ask about some inane detail Eliot had mentioned earlier in the day. Slowly Quentin came back to him, to them, held Teddy in the night again and while Eliot wasn’t sure he ever quite got over Arielle’s death, he knew that he was dealing with it and with time, healing. It wasn’t till much later when Teddy was becoming an adult of his own and Eliot was teaching him the details of growing crops in Fillorian soil and Quentin was taking the piss out his upbringing he realised it might have healed him too.  _

 

“You alright today?” asked Quentin, appearing at Eliot’s elbow and pressing two fingers against it as he reached around to pour his own drink. It was a moment so unendingly familiar Eliot barely registered the contact, the way he’d reach an arm over the back of a sofa and Quentin would shift towards his open embrace without a blink of an eye.

“I’m doing great,” lied Eliot with a grim smile, watching Quentin also pour an unmeasured scotch. At least he wasn’t the only one stressed out.

“I… I was thinking of Teddy,” he said suddenly, Quentin choking briefly on the sip he’d just taken. Eliot wasn’t sure why he’d said that, told the truth, mentioned his name. They never spoke of him or their time together.

“You used to read to him, every night,” he continued blindly, unable to shut up, “And you read him stories, and we, we fought over whether Game of Thrones was appropriate.”

Quentin laughed up at him.

“I won that argument if I recall,” he said lightly, eyes unfocusing from Eliot as he too was drawn into the past.

“And if I recall he got mad that you didn’t know the ending.” 

“Well that was hardly  _ my _ fault,” insisted Quentin and Eliot wasn’t prepared to restart that argument again. They fell silent, both lost in the memory before pulling back into the present and Quentin giving Eliot a small, sad smile.

“There’s no point dwelling now,” he said conclusively, finishing off his drink and heading back to where Kady and Alice were arguing about the bloody Library, leaving Eliot at the drinks table where he was very much dwelling. Sometimes he couldn’t quite believe that he’d lived that life; he had loved and been loved and had a family and a son and then it had just gone.

_ Who gets proof of concept like that?  _ Quentin had asked, and they did, they had, they were a family once. But as Eliot gazed longingly across the room to where Quentin and Julia sat, talking in hushed tones, heads bent over his annotated book, he felt the familiar tug. They had worked then, in that timeline and in that place, but when Quentin had any semblance of a choice he would never choose him, of that Eliot was irrationally sure. And so he slipped from the room and escaped to the kitchen, where a thousand memories of a time long ago couldn't reach him.


End file.
